AccountsIQ Privacy Policy
General Information
Visor Ltd registered in Ireland and AccountsIQ registered in England and Wales (together known as “we”, “our” and “us”, “Controller”, “Company”) are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. This privacy policy explains how we process personal data when you use our website, services or otherwise interact with us, how long we will keep your data, and details on your rights related to data processing.
If we ask you to provide information by which you can be identified, it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement and in compliance with applicable data protection legislation.
We are open and honest about how we collect and use your personal data.
We aim to use your data to improve and personalise our services to you.
We are committed to protecting your data, so we adhere to industry-leading data protection policies.
When we refer to Data Protection Legislation, we mean the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), Data Protection Act 2018, United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and any legislation implemented in connection with this legislation. When we refer to GDPR, we mean EU GDPR and UK GDPR.
Data protection principles
We set out these principles below along with our procedures for complying with such principles:
- Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency – data must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.
- Purpose limitation - data must be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Data minimisation - data must be adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed.
- Accuracy - data must be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date. You are requested to ensure that you notify us of any changes to the personal information you provided to us without undue delay.
- Storage limitation - data must be kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed.
- Integrity and confidentiality - data must be processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction, or damage by using appropriate technical or organisational measures.
What we collect
Personal Data (“PD” or “PI”) refers to any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.
How we collect your personal data
We may collect personal data directly from you when you:
- Register to use AccountsIQ Cloud Accounting
- Use the Service
- Contact the AccountsIQ support team
- Visit our website and record an enquiry, download a resource (such as a whitepaper), or register for a webinar.
- Express your options to receive various communications or request any information
- Interact with us in other ways.
We may collect the following types of personal data:
- Identity Data such as your first name, last name, and username
- Contact Data such as your billing address, email address and telephone numbers
- Technical Data such as login data, internet protocol addresses, browser type and version, browser plug-in types and versions, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access our site as captured automatically by our hosting platform’s webservers
- Profile Data this may include your username and password, preferences, feedback, and survey responses
- Usage Data this may include information about how you use our website, products, and services
- Marketing and Communications Data this may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us and our third parties and your other communication preferences.
Certain personal data is necessary for the performance of certain obligations, i.e. to enter into a contract with you and/or to fulfil contractual obligations we have to our customers. If you refuse to provide such information, we will not be able to perform our obligations and we will not be able to provide you with products or services or respond to your requests.
However, certain PD collected for the purposes of direct marketing, feedback, surveys and the publication thereof is not mandatory and it is up to you whether or not to provide it.
System users within client companies that use AccountsIQ may also collect information and input PD about someone else (e.g., their own customers and suppliers and related contacts within those organisations) as part of their normal finance system activities.
If these system users provide us with your personal information, they must ensure that they are authorised to disclose that information to us. We may then collect, use, and disclose this information to provide services to our client without taking any further steps required by applicable data protection or privacy laws which is the responsibility of the person who is providing us with the information about you.
The AccountsIQ client user in this sense acts as a Data Controller. They are responsible for ensuring they have your consent to collect your data, or they have other legal basis and to make you aware of how your data will be used, including the disclosure to us. Our clients will also tell you about your rights under GDPR.
What do we do with the information we gather and on what legal basis?
We need this information to provide our Services, answer to your requests, interact with you, understand your needs and provide you with a better service for the following reasons and based on the following legal bases:
- To provide our Services and to customize the services and your experience with us. We use your information to provide services, such as processing transactions, log in authentications, and customer support based on our contract with you or on the basis of our legitimate interests to provide the services, in the event that you are not the direct customer, but only a representative or an employee of the customer.
- To answer your queries and resolve technical issues. We use your information to answer your queries and resolve any technical issues you may have, and to improve our services based on our contract with you or on the basis of our legitimate interests to answer your queries and provide our services, in the event that you are not the direct customer, but only a representative or an employee of the customer.
- For research and development. We are always looking for ways to make our software and services smarter, faster, more secure, integrated, and useful to you. We use collective learnings about how people use our services and feedback provided directly to us to troubleshoot and to identify trends, usage, activity patterns and areas for integration and improvement of our services, based on our legitimate interests to improve the services.
- To market, promote, and drive engagement with us. We use your contact details and information about how you use our services to send personalised promotional communications about updates and improvements to our services and other topics of interest, based on our legitimate interests to promote our services.
- For safety and security. We use information about how you use our services to verify accounts and activity, to monitor suspicious or fraudulent activity and to identify violations of service policies, based on our legal obligations, enforcement of the obligations arising from the contract with you or on the basis of our legitimate interests to comply with our legal or contractual obligations.
- To protect our legitimate business interests and legal rights. Where required by law, or where we believe it is necessary to protect our legal rights, interests, and the interests of others, we use information about you in connection with legal claims, compliance, regulatory, and audit functions, and disclosures in connection with the acquisition, merger, or sale of a business, based on a legal obligation incumbent to our Company or on the basis of our legitimate interests.
- With your consent. We may use information about you for a specific purpose not listed above. For example, we may publish testimonials or feature customer stories to promote our services. We only do this with your permission. You can always and unconditionally withdraw your consent by sending us an email at: privacy@accountsiq.com
Marketing communications
We may send you marketing communications if you have:
- Requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us, in relation to your requests, purchased goods or services or similar to those products or services
- Downloaded free resources from our website and have opted in to receive marketing communications from us.
- Downloaded our free resources from AccountingWeb or other similar platforms and have opted in to receive marketing communications from us.
You can always opt out of receiving our marketing communications.
Opting out of communications
You can remove yourself from any mailing list not essential to our Service by emailing support@accountsiq.com or you can use the unsubscribe link in any email. Doing this will mean you no longer receive our marketing communications. We will still send you emails about billing, product, and service updates or respond to your queries.
In the unlikely event that we want to share your data with a third party for marketing purposes, we will get your express opt-in consent before we do so.
How we protect your personal data
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. We work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorised access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take all reasonable measures to do so. We have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure your information.
We also have internal rules in place for security and the management of any security incidents that may occur.
Your personal information is stored on secure servers that have SSL Certificates issued by leading certificate authority GeoTrust RSA, and all data transferred between you and the Service is encrypted (SHA256withRSA). Please see our Security Pages for more information.
AccountsIQ hosts personal information on servers in three locations worldwide
To service our global user base, we host AccountsIQ on three primary host sites world-wide with our Hosting Provider:
- Microsoft Azure UK South for the UK customers
- Microsoft Azure EU Region for the EU customers
- Virginia (USA): Accessed via Virginia (USA)
Unless you expressly opt for the hosting in the USA your personal data will not be transferred outside the E.E.A. The decision to choose between the host sites stated previously rests solely with you and we will act strictly based on your instructions.
However, if you choose to have your personal data hosted outside of the E.E.A, by entering personal information into AccountsIQ, you consent to that personal information being hosted on servers located outside the E.E.A.
The personal information will be hosted by Microsoft Azure as our data processor and you can find out more about the hosting outside the E.E.A by accessing https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/regulatory/offering-eu-model-clauses.
Regardless of your decision related to hosting any personal data, it will always remain within AccountsIQ’s effective control. Our data hosting provider’s role is limited to providing a hosting and storage service to AccountsIQ, and we’ve taken steps to ensure that our data hosting provider does not have access to, and uses the necessary level of protection for, your personal information.
Transferring your data to third-party applications via AccountsIQ’s API
AccountsIQ can facilitate you, or another third-party integration user within the relevant AccountsIQ subscription to transfer PI to and from third-party applications via the AccountsIQ Application Programming Interface (API).
These applications are outside our control and as such AccountsIQ takes no responsibility for the privacy practices or content of these applications.
Please check the privacy policies of third-party applications that you have integrated with AccountsIQ to see how they handle your personal information.
AccountsIQ provides you with regulated account information services as an agent of Plaid Financial Ltd., an authorised payment institution regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (Firm Registration Number: 804718) for the provision of payment services, including account information services.
How we use cookies
A cookie or other similar technologies is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive, except those are strictly necessary for the functioning of the website or application. Once you agree, the file is added, and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to collect information and respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.
If you want to find out about how and what cookies we are using, please read our Cookie policy.
How long do we keep your data?
We will only keep your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine this, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
By law we are required to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.
In respect of the personal data relating to marketing communications, we will retain such data until the prospect withdraws consent and will review the need to retain such data after 3 years if consent has not been withdrawn earlier. Data collected through surveys or other feedback efforts will generally be kept for 12 months after the finalisation of such actions.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information on your rights under Data Protection Legislation.
In certain instances, we may anonymize your personal data (such as that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes. We may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
We also have internal rules in place for data retention and deletion.
Your Legal Rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under Data Protection Legislation in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:
- Request access to your personal data.
- Request rectification of your personal data.
- Request erasure of your personal data.
- Object to processing of your personal data.
- Request restriction of processing your personal data.
- Request transfer of your personal data.
- Right to withdraw consent.
You can see more about these rights here.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us using the details below.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. You can find a list of Supervisory Authorities here.
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time
We will post any privacy policy changes on this page. If the changes are significant, we will add a more prominent notice to your login screen or send you an email. We will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review. We encourage you to review our privacy policy whenever you use our Services or interact with us on website or in other ways, to stay informed about our information practices and the ways you can help protect your privacy.
Data protection officer
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we manage your personal information, please contact the DPO at privacy@accountsiq.com.
How to contact us
If you have questions or concerns about how your information is handled, please contact us at the details below:
Email: privacy@accountsiq.com
Tel: 00353 1 7074400